Michael Lentz – Grönemeyer and the art of mosdry

Urefranely from Göttingen, he was basically born in Bochum in the Ruhr area, says one of the most famous German pop singers. This is also what Herbert Grönemeyer is famous for: cumbling texts, wild mixtures of poetry and Pottscher dialect, topics from pit to world politics. In September, the first overall representation of Grönemeyer’s work and life appeared, written by his long -time friend, the author and literary professor Michael Lent. It is the first Grönemeyer book in which the singer himself participated and became less a biography than a work analysis. He always tried to keep his private life privately. Accordingly, there are only those aspects of Grönemeyer’s life here who have direct and indirect influence on his work.

Grönemeyer grew up in Bochum. When his parents moved there, he was one year old. He thinks the Ruhr area in him does not lose itself. The region is dirty by the coal dust, was a guarantee for the German economic miracle and the “Unsutsche Selbstironie”. The “penchant for alberner melancholy” of the residents could be roughly compared to the chief of the northern French, as shown in the comedy “Welcome to the Sch’tis”. As a child from a middle -class family, whose parents placed great emphasis on education and culture, Grönemeyer played Ukulele and sang, confident and crooked at the age of six.

The father was a mining engineer who quoted in the morning in the garden of Rilke and Goethe. In his youth, Grönemeyer mainly covered well-known English songs at village and city festivals. He never knew the text, he says, but sung in a fantasy language, modeled on the sounds of the songs. But people liked it. He studied law for five semesters. In addition, he worked, 19 years old, at the Schauspielhaus as a pianist, cork repetitioner and musical director. In addition, he wrote film music and acted as an actor in Peter Zadek’s television film “Die Geisel” (1977) and in the world success “Das Boot” (1981) by Wolfgang Petersen. In Peter Schamoni’s “Spring Symphony” (1982) he played the composer Robert Schumann.

He recorded his first record in 1980: a failure as well as the next two. It was only with “4630 Bochum” that the breakthrough came in 1984, almost overnight and unexpected. From 1998, Grönemeyer released on his own label Greenland Records, which also made many young, unknown musicians under contract.

Michael Lentz uses most of the book on the songs by Grönemeyer. It is a detailed analysis of the texts, words, rhythms and motifs. Grönemeyer’s way of working is quite exciting. So the melody always stands first. Then he writes a “banana text” in fake English, because it depends less on the content than on the sound of the words. “The text must not break the melody!” Is the motto.

With many examples from Grönemeyer’s notes from previously unpublished texts, Lentz Grönemeyer’s work process makes visible, both formally and according to individual psychological criteria. It all seems very logical and understandable. The analysis of the finished songs is also interesting up to a certain degree if Lentz emphasizes the unconscious factors that influence the hearing of the songs using classic poetic analyzes. For example, the function of snuggling at Grönemeyer and his technology to work with the voice as with another musical instrument, less to bring meaning, but to get feeling into his songs.

As an Auror, however, Michael Lentz is not exactly for general intelligibility. After around 150 pages (from 384) it gets very serious and Akdemisch. Hardly a page on which three foreign or specialist words should not be googled. Except for the letter level, he takes Grönemeyer’s texts apart, analyzes the motifs that run through his work, and the emphasis, harmonies, assonances and rhymes. The sentences are becoming more and more complicated, it is also about authors such as Hegel and Foucault, but Lentz repeats itself in its basic statements about Grönemeyer’s music. It looks paradoxical when he always emphasizes Grönemeyer’s ease in the production process.

The second half of the book is something for cropped thinkers, the first for the general public.

Michael Lentz: Grönemeyer. Fischer, 384 pages, born, 24 €.